Barbara Hutchison

This work is an installation using painting, sculpture and light to create three-dimensional works designed to provoke a broad sensory and cerebral experience.

The images painted are personal vignettes of my family, oblivious to being observed. They are exposed in states of confidence and the painted images themselves are meant to be evocative and contemplative.

The second element of metal frames supporting crocheted jute mandalas, sit vertically in front of the paintings and function as a series of semi-opaque barriers, built to partially obscure the painted canvas, visually and physically.  The distance between the painted image and the framed mandalas is determined by the location of the light casting the shadows but doesn’t allow the viewer to easily pass between them.

These screens cast patterned shadows on to the picture plane. They draw attention to the surface to emphasize the physicality of the painting and to interrupt the illusion of space rendered therein. The pattern cast will spill over onto the gallery walls.

The crocheted pattern (star wheel no. 744 pub. January 1934) used here was the one my maternal grandmother prolifically produced as I was growing up.  I would marvel at how quickly her hands could move and how she needn’t look down to check her stitches.  I have been researching pattern for a number of years and thought to use those that were not only familiar to me, but also ones that provoked specific memories and responses.   

The shadows created are like markings, disrupting the sanctity of the interior vignette while at once enhancing the aesthetic. They create shelter, a respite from the glare of exposure. They cool, protect and enhance. But the screens and reflected shadows also confine, restrict and contain.

The screens are intended as a layering device to obscure the images and force their visual excavation, unearthed as history and articulating a studied attention and empathy. The images become more poignant and powerful because they are partially inaccessible.